Usually, we don’t suffer from jet lag when flying east to west. So after a nine hour flight east from Atlanta, we arrived in Amsterdam, Holland, at 8 a.m. the next morning ready to go exploring. A chauffeur, in a Mercedes, waited to whisk us off to Rotterdam where we would board our cruise ship. As we drove across flat fields, we sighted of our first windmill under a lowering sky.

Our driver—who spoke good English as do most Dutch—explained that Holland, or the Netherlands, is in a never-ending battle with water. Dykes, sluices, canals, pumps, windmills and modern floodgates hold back the numerous rivers draining into the sea, and the sea washing back into the land. Yet, meandering through the city you don’t have a sense that so much of the land is reclaimed let alone below sea level. As soon as we checked into the hotel, we dumped our baggage, and, as our room wasn’t ready, set out to explore the city. A sudden happy jing, jing! made me jump to the side as a biker swerved around me. Read More...